Page 205 of The Fifth Heir

I saw it.

By the time we returned to the Fifth Wing, I could not stop thinking about it.

Malcolm had dedicated his life to preserving the Trials. If he believed the five of us represented corruption rather than restoration, sabotaging the demonstration would not be an act of ambition. It would be an act of faith.

Faith made dangerous enemies. Evidence rarely changed it.

Surrendering his keys might close doors to Malcolm. It would not alter whatever conviction had made Talia’s existence offend him.

The others gathered in the common room to discuss the inquiry. I went directly to the study.

The room still showed traces of pale blue from whatever had occurred between Talia and Leander that morning. A few red runes remained near the doorway from the previous night. Normally, I found the wing’s lack of discretion irritating.

Today, the mixed colors caught my attention.

Blue and red appeared in separate runes, but where their light overlapped, violet formed across the stone.

Not a new source of power. A different result created when two sources crossed.

Refraction.

Talia’s power did more than redirect force. It exposed relationships that separate elements could not reveal—and perhaps truths that had been hidden from any single kind of magic.

I unlocked the bottom drawer of my desk and removed the rubbing I had taken from the restricted archive.

FOUR ENTER. ONE EMERGES.

The visible inscription had been carved above the earliest recorded entrance to the Trials. The words appeared in every crown-law text, every academy history, and every account of a Choosing for the last eight hundred years.

The first word had always bothered me.

Not its meaning. Its construction.

The remaining words were carved in one continuous hand. The letters slanted slightly to the right, and each groove ended in a triangular point. FOUR appeared straighter. Cleaner. Its grooves ended bluntly.

Someone had not altered individual letters.

Someone had placed one word over another.

I set the rubbing beneath the study light and positioned a violet crystal at its edge. Shadow alone had revealed the seal around the first word, but every attempt to penetrate it had failed.

Perhaps shadow was never intended to break it.

I needed a second source crossing mine.

Talia entered without knocking.

She stopped when she saw the rubbing. “You disappeared.”

“I had an idea.”

“Is it an idea that requires food?”

“No.”

“Sleep?”

“No.”